Is "follow for follow" cheating?

[Sophia]

I know this question might sound a little pointless but I see people on Instagram & twitter who follow heaps of accounts just to get loads of followers. My friend on instagram is following over 3000 now, and she doesn't even look at their accounts, she just wants to have thousands of followers, which I think is ridiculous. On social media, I think followers should be earned if they actually like your account & you should only follow people if you like their's. So therefore, following for followers is pretty much just cheating. Anyone agree with me on this?

[SavvyNerd]

It is the internet and there are no rules about people having/earning/getting followers ( except that your not supposed to buy subscribers, which breaks the terms of service).
But since they are not buying their followers, they are not breaking any rules, so it is not cheating.

(Side note): Following is the users choice and following back is the other users choice. Just because people followed you or you followed them does not mean you/they have to follow back.
Yes it does feel like, to those who are not following for following, you are getting jipped, but you gain more real followers than ones that could care less.